On August 17th last year, Tropical Storm Fred hit my county. Up to 20" of rain fell in a space of a few hours over 5,000'-6,000' elevations, and literal walls of water came boring at lightning speed down the steep, V-shaped valleys of the headwaters of the Pigeon River. Whole communities and sizable portions of towns were completely washed away. Several people died, and many roads were closed for months. Many, many people lost everything they owned. Uncountable numbers of houses were just gone, like they had never existed. The only thing that saved even greater destruction from happening was that this event happened in the early afternoon while most people were at work. If it had happened in the middle of the night, the death toll would have been astronomical.
Needless to say, aside from the human suffering, this was not good news for the many fine trout streams that make up the headwaters of this river system that I have spent so many days fishing over the last five decades. We're talking about floods that move multi-ton boulders that have been sitting in place for hundreds or thousands of years. Whole mountainsides liquefied and slid off into the valleys, carrying cliffs and timber with them.
I finally got up the nerve to head up that way and hit a couple of my favorite little creeks, trying to see if anything was left.
The first creek I visited is a tiny, mostly unknown stream that used to be brimming full of native speckled trout.
It was still dark, gloomy, and foggy as I hiked in. I stopped to admire and sniff a patch of sweetshrub in full bloom.
I fished nearly a mile up the little creek. Drifting a fly through countless fine-looking runs and pools yielded exactly nothing. No strikes. No fish spooking as I waded. In pools that would normally see swarms of small juvenile specks mobbing a fly; nothing. Finally, in a deep pool with a huge sunken, stripped log lying in the bottom, a fish rose to my fly and sucked it down.
This 8 1/2" hen speck is an unusually big trophy for this size creek, but she seemed to be very much all alone. I carefully released her and watched her fin back to the security of her sunken log. I fished another quarter mile upstream without seeing another sign of a fish. I hope she can find a mate this fall, and start to repopulate this creek. It seems hopeless, but these fish have been here for thousands of years. This is not the first major flood they have seen, nor the last. I doubt if I will see this creek recover in my lifetime, but I have hope that the fish will keep doing what they have been doing since well before the first human set foot on this continent. I hiked back out, feeling much gloomier than I felt when I hiked in.
Needless to say, aside from the human suffering, this was not good news for the many fine trout streams that make up the headwaters of this river system that I have spent so many days fishing over the last five decades. We're talking about floods that move multi-ton boulders that have been sitting in place for hundreds or thousands of years. Whole mountainsides liquefied and slid off into the valleys, carrying cliffs and timber with them.
I finally got up the nerve to head up that way and hit a couple of my favorite little creeks, trying to see if anything was left.
The first creek I visited is a tiny, mostly unknown stream that used to be brimming full of native speckled trout.
It was still dark, gloomy, and foggy as I hiked in. I stopped to admire and sniff a patch of sweetshrub in full bloom.
I fished nearly a mile up the little creek. Drifting a fly through countless fine-looking runs and pools yielded exactly nothing. No strikes. No fish spooking as I waded. In pools that would normally see swarms of small juvenile specks mobbing a fly; nothing. Finally, in a deep pool with a huge sunken, stripped log lying in the bottom, a fish rose to my fly and sucked it down.
This 8 1/2" hen speck is an unusually big trophy for this size creek, but she seemed to be very much all alone. I carefully released her and watched her fin back to the security of her sunken log. I fished another quarter mile upstream without seeing another sign of a fish. I hope she can find a mate this fall, and start to repopulate this creek. It seems hopeless, but these fish have been here for thousands of years. This is not the first major flood they have seen, nor the last. I doubt if I will see this creek recover in my lifetime, but I have hope that the fish will keep doing what they have been doing since well before the first human set foot on this continent. I hiked back out, feeling much gloomier than I felt when I hiked in.
To be continued....